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In nineteenth century London the theatre was a popular pastime. London's stationers and print shops sold toy paper theatres, character sheets, and theatrical portraits. These souvenir portrait prints featured actors and actresses in character in their more successful roles. The theatrical portraits were produced in London from copperplates. Theatrical portraits were sold for a penny plain, to be coloured at home, or ready-coloured prints could be bought for twopence. Prints were also sold with foil pieces, to tinsel the portraits.

The portraits were popular with young theatre goers in the same way as posters of pop stars and film actors are today. They were also an attractive and affordable form of home decoration - many of the theatrical portraits were framed and hung on walls to decorate the home.

At the start of the nineteenth century only licenced theatres could legitimately perform spoken drama, like Shakespeare or classical plays. Other theatres found innovative ways to attract audiences with dramatic new performances. Some theatres performed Equestrian Drama, using trained horses and skilled performers. Others developed popular new genres, such as nautical melodrama. Eventually the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate drama was eroded. By the time the law dividing legitimate and illegitimate theatres was revised in 1843 there was an established tradition of theatrical spectaculars, and an audience enthralled by ambitious staging and elaborate costumes. Theatrical prints allowed people to collect some of the fleeting, spectacular moments they had seen on stage.

The Museum of London's collection includes over a thousand theatrical portraits, which provide a record of the performers, their roles, the costumes they wore and how the plays were performed. The actors and actresses are often depicted at very dramatic moments, often in stylized poses. The earlier portraits give more detail about the performers, but as tinselling became more popular this information was included inconsistently.

Most of the objects in the museum's collection come from Jonathan King, a stationer who ran a shop in Essex road, Islington. The collection of prints is especially illustrative as it includes materials used to make and sell the prints. Alongside the portraits there are sample sheets, background sheets, copperplates, packaged tinsel pieces, price lists for tinsels and tinsel dies used to cut out the metal foil pieces.

Theatrical portraits were at the most popular during the middle of the nineteenth century. Later Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an essay about them in his book 'Memories and Portraits' (1884.) Stevenson's enthusiastic essay is marked with nostalgia, as he recalls his childhood pleasure in buying, colouring and collecting theatrical portraits: "To undo the bundles and breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults ? it was a giddy joy" (Stevenson, 1884.)

Later in the essay Stevenson wrote that "it may be that the museum numbers a full set, but to the plain private person they are become, like Raphaels, unattainable" (Stevenson, 1884.) The Museum of London boasts a remarkable collection of portraits and the tools used to print, sell and adorn them. Now they are online, they are no longer unattainable.  

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